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Sex tips 7 - How To Put A Condom On During Sex

Well, you might think this wouldn't be needed, but there's startling evidence than a lot of people have no idea how to use a condom.

In her study of college age students, Stephanie Sanders and her colleagues discovered that among 102 college students, putting condoms on their male partners for oral, anal or vaginal sex, there were some horrific mistakes. (I say horrific because a mistake with a condom can lead to an unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, or, in the worst case, HIV transmission.)

Unbelievably, 51% put the condom on after starting sex. This is amazing - didn't we all learn in Sex Education classes that "precome" or "precum" (aka pre-ejaculatory fluid) can contain sperm, and that any insertion of the guy's penis into the woman during sex can potentially result in the transmission of sperm?

Even worse, 15% removed the condom before sex had finished!

If you think that's hard to believe, what would you make of the fact that 48% of the students wanted a condom for sex but didn't have one? There's no evidence here of the students thinking ahead that sex might be on the agenda and that contraception would be need. Even amongst those who did have a condom ready, the use of the condom was poor.

Sure, we all get experience as we grow older, but really, if you're going to have sex, then surely you'd find out how to use a condom? Of these students, 46% didn't know they had to leave a space in the teat for the man's ejaculation, thereby risking the condom bursting with the force of his ejaculation. Another 30% put the condom on inside out, so it wouldn't roll down over the man's penis - and then tried to take it off and start again. Anyone who's been in this situation knows how impossible this is. You have to look at the condom before you have sex, and get it right - and if you start unrolling it down the wrong way, it can be near impossible to get it over the man's erect penis.

Even so, things go from bad to worse. About one in four of these students did not use a lubricant, even though the majority of them wanted to (presumably again they simply hadn't bought any). And one in four of the men experienced loss of erection when their partner tried to put the condom in their penis. I've never really understood why this happens, and various theories exist (it breaks the flow of sex, it's a turn-off, and so on), but to find that one man in four experiences loss of erection is truly astounding. If the partners were relaxed about putting the condom on, and made it a part of their sex play, surely this would stop it being such a problem? The difficulty, of course, is that when the man loses his erection, it becomes even more challenging to get the condom on his penis correctly if he regains his erection.

So in the light of all this, it's no surprise to find that 28% of these couples reported condom breakage or slippage or both. That renders the contraception - and protection against disease - so much less effective! Some couples would have no effective protection against pregnancy when they used the condoms - and the irony is that normally condoms are 98% effective as contraception - that's at least as effective as any other form of contraception!

So here, in response to these alarming figures, is Sex Techniques And Position's guide to putting on a condom!

Woman puts condom on her man's penis with her fingers

The only things that really matter when putting on a condom is that

1) you don't rip, tear or puncture it (so no long fingernails girls!)

2) you squeeze the teat end between your finger and thumb to expel the air

3) you unroll it to the base of his penis and leave any excess length rolled up

4) you put it on the right way up - and if you start to unroll it the wrong way round, you take it off and start again with another condom

Woman puts condom on man's penis with her mouth

This is a good way to prevent a man losing his erection when you put a condom on - a surprisingly common problem, and one which can be a passion-killer. It happens because the flow of sex is interrupted by what seems like an unsexy act. But if the man learns to associate the condom with the fact that he's about to insert his penis into a warm, wet mouth or vagina, the whole thing can become exciting rather than a turn-off.